"Blundering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rustling in the thicket of birds frightened from their roost. The fireflies, too, which sparkled most vividly in the darkest places, now and then startled him, as one of uncommon brightness would stream across his path; and if, by chance, a huge blockhead of a beetle came winging his blundering flight against him, the poor varlet was ready to give up the ghost, with the idea that he was struck with a witch's token. His only resource on such occasions, either to drown thought or drive away evil spirits, was to sing psalm tunes and the good people of Sleepy Hollow, as they sat by their ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... secure advantages which his quick eye perceived. I noticed that whenever he pointed out any particular branch on the shore to be seized, how certain the other was to strike it at once. With white men, how much blundering and missing there ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... she was so sincere in it, that she suffered it to spread all over the company; and it was a pretty large one too; and not a person in it but turned either her consoler, or fell into stories of the like misfortunes; and so we all became, for the rest of the evening, nothing but blundering footmen, and careless servants, or were turned into broken jars, plates, glasses, tea-cups, and such like brittle substances. And it affected me so much, that, when I came home, I went to bed, and dreamt, that Robin, with the handle of his whip, broke the fore glass of my chariot; and I was so solicitous, ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... the rose of dawn, or the crimson of sunset, or a pale silvery blueness that you would swear was moonshine. It has been used in all the Court ballets. I saw Madame once look as ghastly as death itself, and all the Court was seized with terror. Some blundering fool had burnt the wrong powder, which cast a greenish tint over the faces, and Henriette's long thin features had a look of death. It seemed the forecast of an early grave; and some of us shuddered, as at ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... exterminated, and form to this day a large proportion of the folk of Scotland, occupying the eastern and the central parts, from the Firth of Forth, or perhaps the Lammermoors, upon the south, to the Ord of Caithness on the north. That the blundering guess of a dull chronicler should have inspired men with imaginary loathing for their own ancestors is already strange; that it should have begotten this wild legend seems incredible. Is it possible the chronicler's error was merely nominal? that what he told, and what ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 14 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... he felt the warm responsive clasp of those soft fingers, that ancient delicious thrill pierced every vein. Fool that he had been to doubt that dear hand! And it was wearing his ring still—she could not part with it! O blundering male ingrate! ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... fix, too, you see; and now you've just got to get me out of it. I'm not going back. I don't know the path as well as you do. Besides, it will be dark soon, and I should probably break my neck. It's a shame, Mooween, to put any gentleman in such a fix as I am in this minute, just by your blundering carelessness. Why didn't you smell me anyway, as any but a fool bear would have done, and take some other path over the mountain? Why don't you climb that spruce now and get out of ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... A blundering bat once stuck her head Into a wakeful weasel's bed; Whereat the mistress of the house, A deadly foe of rats and mice, Was making ready in a trice To eat the stranger as a mouse. "What! do you dare," she said, "to creep ...
— A Hundred Fables of La Fontaine • Jean de La Fontaine
... who narrowly missed being President, and who was a greater man than many of the Presidents; but he did miss, and he died, and there was an end of him. There was Buchanan also; intellectually he had the making of a statesman; but his wrong-headed blundering is sufficiently depicted for the purposes of this series by the lives of ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... 1680, when no less than one pound eight shillings was contributed "for redemption of Christians (taken by ye Turkish pyrates) out of Turkish slavery." Two hundred years ago the Turk was pretty "unspeakable" still. Of all blundering Dogberries, the most confused kept (in 1670) the parish register at ...
— Books and Bookmen • Andrew Lang
... up the appearance of poverty, even if he had not reason for it in the felonious spirit of appropriation still subsisting under legal sanction. We are too apt to place to the account of race or religion the results of malignant or blundering legislation. We are not without examples of such results ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... a witch?" asked Ralph, blundering as an honest and bashful man may in times of distress ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... Then he gave a sort of inarticulate cry, dropped candle and writ together, and went blundering down the dark passage to the stairs. I shut the door, locked it, and went to the looking-glass. Then I understood his terror.... My face ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... Pout, Pimelodus nebulosus, sometimes called Minister, from the peculiar squeaking noise it makes when drawn out of the water, is a dull and blundering fellow, and like the eel vespertinal in his habits, and fond of the mud. It bites deliberately as if about its business. They are taken at night with a mass of worms strung on a thread, which catches in their teeth, sometimes three or four, with an eel, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... After some time they thought they could do nothing wiser than put a good face upon the affair; whatever might be the result, it was, at any rate, a victory, and a victory would please the vainest of nations: and so these blundering and blustering gentlemen determined to adopt the conqueror, whom they were at first weak enough to disclaim, then vile enough to bully, and finally forced to reward. The Statue accordingly whispered a most elaborate panegyric on Furioso, which was of course duly delivered. The ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... darkness and slid away amongst the broken rock. Rogers fell upon his knees and groped about blindly, but the ground was hard. There was no sign of the gold anywhere, and not another stone in the quarry that answered to the boy's description. Possessed with a stupid blundering fury against Dick, Rogers turned back towards the Piper. He breathed horrible blasphemies as he ran, and struck at the scrub in his insensate rage. He was a man of fierce passions, and meant murder during those first few minutes-swift and ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... he might have found relief in raging at his stupidity, as he had raged at the grotesque blunders that had brought him to prison. But now in prison, in freedom, he thought over and criticised all his actions again and by no means found them so blundering and so grotesque as they had seemed at ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the carriage of Alderman Popkins, as it made its appearance at Terracina. The courier who had preceded it, to order horses, and who was a Neapolitan, had given a magnificent account of the riches and greatness of his master, blundering with all an Italian's splendor of imagination about the alderman's titles and dignities; the host had added his usual share of exaggeration, so that by the time the alderman drove up to the door, he was Milor—Magnifico—Principe—the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... the MEDICAL COLLEGE it will give a method of accurate diagnosis which will supersede the blundering methods now existing—a method of RAPIDLY enlarging and perfecting the materia medica—a method of exploring all difficult questions in Biology and Pathology, and a complete view of the ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, September 1887 - Volume 1, Number 8 • Various
... sudden gleam of her silver-tipped wings, and thought it was a flash of summer lightning, and were conscious at the same moment of a delicious fragrance as of violets, and said the wind must be from the west, for it was wafting to them country scents. Fairy Violet laughed as she heard their blundering guesses, a laugh that rippled out on the still air like the chiming of silver bells, and then flew joyously on to thank the Wizard of the Black ...
— How the Fairy Violet Lost and Won Her Wings • Marianne L. B. Ker
... if it were an artificial production, opticians would know how to improve it. And as for instinct, numberless cases might be adduced of imperfection, ranging in all degrees from a slight deficiency to fatal blundering. ...
— The Scientific Evidences of Organic Evolution • George John Romanes
... best friends could say of him was, that he was "a very worthy young man." He was not an orator: he had an atrocious delivery, and rarely got through the briefest epistle, or collect even, without blundering over a preposition. His demeanour in pulpit and reading-desk was that of a prisoner at the bar, without hope of acquittal, and yet he had won Miss Granger—that prize in the matrimonial market, which many a stout Yorkshireman had been eager ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Instead they were forever blundering and halting in what they said; coming face to face and almost running over one another as they tried to help each other; laughing and blushing ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... the quick change that had come into his face at Diccon's blundering words gone, and his features sternly impassive again; then, very slowly, he raised his arm from his side and held out his hand. His eyes met mine in sombre inquiry, half ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... Wallace,—I hate controversy, chiefly perhaps because I do it badly; but as Dr. Bree accuses you of "blundering," I have thought myself bound to send the enclosed letter[91] to Nature, that is, if you in the least desire it. In this case please post it. If you do not at all wish it, I should rather prefer not sending it, and in this case please ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... in Boy Scouting and excursions of one kind or another. The discovery that anything, even school life, is better for the child than home life, will become an over-ridden hobby; and we shall presently be told by our faddists that anything, even camp life, is better than school life. Some blundering beginnings of this are already perceptible. There is a movement for making our British children into priggish little barefooted vagabonds, all talking like that born fool George Borrow, and supposed to be splendidly healthy because they would die if ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... is one of those lowering fellows, the kind that seems to be at outs with mankind. Just the material to become sulky in any but the most skillful hands, the sort to degenerate into a positive brute, in such blundering hands as Mrs. Purblind's over ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... travail, a race with conscience enough to know that it is vile, and intelligence enough to know that it is insignificant. We survey the past and see that its history is of blood and tears, of helpless blundering, of wild revolt, of stupid acquiescence, of empty aspirations. We sound the future, and learn that after a period, long compared with the individual life, but short indeed compared with the divisions of time ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... said the Queen. "The sailor's blundering loyalty will not suffer him to hold his tongue. I would lay my two lost crowns that he is down on his honest knees before my Lord craving pardon for having unwittingly fostered one of the viper brood. Then, via! ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... do," Lionel declared. "We must hearten her up somehow," which he proceeded to do, after the blundering fashion of the ordinary man, by a series of thrilling anecdotes about cattle and their vagaries, refractory cows who turned upon their herders and "horned" them, and wild steers who chased mounted ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... foremost of all wielders of weapons, said, "It is even so as thou hast said. That is not untrue! He boasteth on the eve of every battle, but yet he is seen to retreat from every engagement. Kind (out of season) and blundering, it is for this that Karna, in my judgment, is ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of 55'' Perhaps independently of Aryabhatta (born at Pataliputra on the Ganges 476 A.D.), he introduced the use of sines in calculation, and partially that of tangents. His principal work, De Motu Stellarum, was published at Nuremberg in 1537 by Melanchthon, in a blundering Latin translation by Plato Tiburtinus (fl. 1116), annotated by Regiomontanus. A reprint appeared at Bologna in 1645. The original MS. is preserved at the Vatican; and the Escorial library possesses in MS. a treatise of some value by him on astronomical chronology. Albategnius takes the highest ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... seem to you rather a blundering contrivance for a clever young man to bury the guineas. But, if everything had turned out as David had calculated, you would have seen that his plan was worthy of his talents. The guineas would have lain safely in the earth while the theft was discovered, ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... tries to pass off the kitchen-maid as Alfrida: the trick is detected, Dunstan counsels forgiveness, and Edgar generously renounces his claim. There is but one scene of "Kempe's applauded merriments," and this consists merely of a blundering dispute, whether a mock petition touching the consumption of ale shall be presented to the King by a cobbler ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... epic life, only a life of mistakes, the offspring of a certain spiritual grandeur ill-matched with the meanness of opportunity." You must search these marvellous studies in motives for the key to the blunders of "the blundering lives" of woman which "some have felt are due to the inconvenient indefiniteness with which the Supreme power has fashioned the natures of women." But as there is not "one level of feminine incompetence as strict as ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... was angry with the woman and yet attracted by her, and at the same time ashamed of being so. I suppose these three conflicting emotions combined to make me careless. Anyway, the next thing that happened was that I, who never stumbled, found myself blundering over a rush-seated chair, and sweeping two dessert-plates from the table as I clutched out to preserve my balance. The waiter, who was in the room, rapped out a good round obscene oath of surprise. Nothing but ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... the road. He had not guessed the lady had seen his heart, for he hardly saw it himself; yet he called himself a blundering fool. He wondered that he had dared to talk with her so long, yet he wondered more that he had not dared to talk longer. In all this he never thought of social grades, as he had done in connection with the smiles of the Miss Browns. Sophia Rexford had struck his fancy more as a superior being; ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... at all a clever person," he laughed. "Indeed, as I told you, I am always blundering into trouble, and making things uncomfortable for my friends. I regret to say I am rather under a cloud just now in the service, and I have been called upon to endure ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... organizations as we do other living institutions, not by their declaration of principles, which we seldom read, but by their blundering efforts to apply their principles to actual conditions, and by the oft-time failure of their representatives, when the individual finds himself too weak to become the ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... by authority above what it will yield with a profit to the buyer, that commodity will be the less dealt in. If a second blundering interposition be used to correct the blunder of the first, and an attempt is made to force the purchase of the commodity (of labour for instance), the one of these two things must happen, either that the ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... this—upon my word! What in heaven's name is the matter with you all? Here has been that blundering booby William, pushed his father and me down-stairs, and Martha seems the only one that would care a farthing if ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... his dragoons, and sent them to fire into the casements of the chateau, while he kept the rest of his men in hand in the neighbourhood, he must have captured every soul of the party, and by this time had you all fast at the French headquarters; but he blundered, and he has paid the price of blundering." To my laughing reply, "that there was at least some merit in the steadiness of the men who beat him"—"Of course," was his answer. "The English steadiness is like the English fire, the grand cure for the English contempt of the tactician. Yours is an army of grenadiers; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... even a little physic;" who may be able to read Galen in the original; who knows all the plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop upon the wall; but who finds himself, with the issues of life and death in his hands, ignorant, blundering, and bewildered, because of his ignorance of the essential and fundamental truths upon which practice must be based. Moreover, I venture to say, that any man who has seriously studied all the essential branches of medical knowledge; ...
— American Addresses, with a Lecture on the Study of Biology • Tomas Henry Huxley
... defense for himself built up. "I told myself she should have understood without words and I've all my life been telling myself the same thing about Mary. I've been a fool and a coward. I've always been silent because I've been afraid of expressing myself—like a blundering fool. I've been a ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... the supper-table. Settling down in our places at the long table laden with good things, a stern admonitory glance from our father would let us into the secret of the new guest's status—his unsuitability to his surroundings. It was great fun to watch him furtively and listen to his blundering conversational efforts, but we knew that the least sound of a titter on our part would have been an unpardonable offence. The poor and more uncouth, or ridiculous, from our childish point of view, they appeared, the more anxious my mother would be to put them at their ease. And she would ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... whence they come, and not as if they came from nowhere, because no one appears presenting them. The careless soul receives the Father's gifts as if it were a way things had of dropping into his hand. He thus grants himself a slave, dependent on chance and his own blundering endeavour—yet is he ever complaining, as if some one were accountable for the checks which meet him at every turn. For the good that comes to him, he gives no thanks—who is there to thank? at the disappointments that befall him he grumbles—there must be some one to blame! He ...
— Unspoken Sermons - Series I., II., and II. • George MacDonald
... liberty, and had begun to fit them for its exercise:—facts which it was equally in accordance with nature that the Fatherland should fail to perceive. For the causes which gradually determined American resistance we must look, (as regards us), not to the blundering English legislation after 1760,—to the formalism of Grenville, the subterfuges of Franklin,—but to the whole course of our commercial policy since the Revolution: As regards the Colonies, to the extinction of the power of France in America ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... of David Garrick, had escaped censure, and in the Apology Garrick was clearly threatened. He deprecated criticism by showing every possible civility to Churchill, who became a terror to the actors. Thomas Davies wrote to Garrick attributing his blundering in the part of Cymbeline "to my accidentally seeing Mr Churchill in the pit, it rendering me confused and unmindful of my business." Churchill's satire made him many enemies, and inquiries into his way of life provided abundant matter ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... he landed—for he traveled by boat, disguised as a master mariner. However, as a man of practical intelligence, he had calculated all the risks of the undertaking; his passport and papers were all in order, and the men told off to take him were afraid of blundering. ...
— Parisians in the Country - The Illustrious Gaudissart, and The Muse of the Department • Honore de Balzac
... the case that the distress has lasted some time before an opportunity of doing anything occurs, inflammation, more or less, has set in, weeks may have passed, and blundering treatment may have done great mischief. Then it is safe to use the heat at the back, and frequently changed cold cloths in front, so as to reduce the inflammation, and contract the bowels more slowly, so as to remove ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... inhabitants have forfeited all claims to trust? That no one, in future, should make a bargain with a German, knowing that he is a dishonorable and dishonored man?... Germany has made many blunders—an almost inconceivable number of blunders; but this blundering crime is surely the culminating point of blunder. Did any nation ever before deliberately throw away its political, commercial, financial, and social credit to no purpose? To gain what? England as an adversary, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Buster Bumblebee heard what they said. Anyhow, he flew off in his blundering, clumsy way without ...
— The Tale of Mrs. Ladybug • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the case of most of the birds the cares of nesting are past, and the woods abound with full-sized but awkward young birds, blundering through their first month of insect-hunting and fly-catching, tumbling into the pools from which they try to drink, and shrieking with the very joy of life, when it would be far safer for that very life if they ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... TO DO IT.—The Seybert commission having made a splendid failure to find interesting and valuable facts where other investigators have succeeded, their blundering ignorance is now assisted by newspaper mendacity. The New York Times, of Aug. 22, concludes an extremely stupid article on this subject, by the following paragraph, which, if the writer gave any indications of intelligence, would ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, October 1887 - Volume 1, Number 9 • Various
... of Escobar he killed him. But he did know in a general way where we expected to find the stuff. So, when you and I skip out and don't head straight back to the gulf, he's pretty sure I'm still making a stab at getting the treasure. And it has happened that you and I, blundering along in the dark, have hit on this spot which is not far from the place where the treasure is supposed to be. So Rios hides in the brush with a pair of glasses and keeps his eye peeled for us. I think that's the whole explanation of his being out yonder. And I think ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... at some future time Alice Puttenham's poor secret must be told—to a specified person, with her consent, and by the express direction of that honest, blundering man, her brother-in-law, whose life, sorely against his will, had been burdened with it. But the indiscriminate admission of the truth, after the lapse of years, would, he believed, simply bring back the old despair, and paralyze what had always been a frail vitality. And as to Hester, the ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... had lately happened might confuse a clearer head than Jobson's, and promised to retain him in the family, offering him the choice of being his personal attendant, or porter at Castle-Bellingham. Jobson's joy and gratitude were unbounded. He preferred the former office. "Because," said he, "such a blundering fellow as I, who cannot tell rebels from honest men, may let pickpockets and gamblers into a true Lord's house, if they happen to have smooth tongues, and shut plain honesty out of it, which I hope will never be the case in Old England. But if I live always under ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... exclaimed angrily, "you are a very clever young man, or you are extremely ignorant. Either," he went on with increasing indignation, "they have sent you here to test me, or you know nothing, and you are blundering in where other men are doing work. If you know nothing you are going to upset the plans of those men. In any case I will have nothing further to do with you. I wash my hands ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... "Ye fool ye! Ye blundering idiot!" he whispered, "she's a half-breed. Och! But's time y'r eastern greenness was tannin' a good western russet! Let her follow with bowed head, or you'll have the whole pack on ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... money that was coming to them. At the word "money" the judge pricked up his ears. In his court certainly money was the root of much evil as well as of pain. What money? Was the little girl an heiress? From the blundering lips of honest Mrs. Clark the story tumbled out, under the judge's expert questioning, exactly as it was. At the conclusion, with one significant scowl at the uncomfortable Mr. Bright, the judge gathered to himself all the papers, saying that ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... such a sight was the most unwelcome you could imagine, since it was a sure sign there would be no scent. The poor foreigner was duly crestfallen, as happens whenever one has nearly spoilt a friend's property through some piece of blundering. ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... flight, he wondered? Some one he was afraid, might have seen him and Louie at the station and told tales. He was not sure that one of the Wigsons had not been hanging about the station yard. And that letter of David's to Louie, which in his clumsy blundering way he had dropped somewhere about the farm buildings or the house, and had not been able to find again! It gave him a cold sweat to think that in his absence Hannah might have come upon it and drawn her own conclusions. As he followed ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Kieft, the predecessor of Stuyvesant in the government of New Amsterdam, was a tyrannical, blundering administrator, whose rule was marked by disastrous wars with the Indians and dissension among his own people which nearly ruined the province. He was recalled by the home government, and while on his way to Holland was lost in the wreck, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... Kid, you know. Say, Sis, he's had a life for you! Full of adventure, all kinds of sport. And Bisbee shot first, too. But the Kid got him!" he concluded triumphantly. "Galloway told me all about it . . . and what a blundering rummy the ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... My blundering apology and evident embarrassment deepened Miss Cullen's blush five-fold, and she explained, hurriedly, "I found I was tired, and so, instead of writing, I went to my ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... finished up with a great laugh of the happiest good nature, which quite robbed Fyles of his last shadow of aloofness. No one could have looked into the man's humorously smiling eyes, or listened to the frank admissions of his own blundering, and felt it necessary to entertain the least question ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... a scream from the hooded figure in the middle of the floor—a scream of mingled anger, defiance and terror which rang in Anstice's ears for hours afterwards, and following the scream a mad, wild rush for the door—a blundering, stumbling rush in which the very garment, the long, loose cloak which was intended for a disguise, proved itself a handicap and effectually prevented its wearer making good her escape. By the time ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... stock, mignonette, and velvet-brown wallflowers. Dr. Ben had planted all these himself, haphazard, and loved the resulting untidy jumble of bloom, with the lilac blossoms rustling overhead, birds nesting in his willow and pepper trees, and bees buzzing and blundering ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... indeed,' and he shakes her with a ferocity that would have startled any sudden visitor. No wonder, then, that it is a shock to Cosmo, who comes blundering in. Alice is the first to see him, and she turns the ...
— Alice Sit-By-The-Fire • J. M. Barrie
... most extraordinary accounts of most of the English writers. Without an English guide to attend such weary travellers, they have too often been deceived by the mirages of our literature. They have given blundering accounts of works which do exist, and chronicled others which never did exist; and have often made up the personal history of our authors, by confounding two or three into one. Chaudon, mentioning Dryden's tragedies, observes, that Atterbury ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... mind. A weekly journal patronized by his wife had three columns regularly, but he taxed his memory in vain for any instructions concerning brown-eyed strangers with sprained ankles. He felt that the path of duty led to the tram-lines. In a somewhat blundering fashion he proffered his services; the girl accepted them as ...
— Short Cruises • W.W. Jacobs
... suspicions with a duty to the society. Demagogues can appeal to the passions aroused by this prevailing sense of unfair play for the purpose of getting themselves elected to office or for the purpose of passing blundering measures of repression. The type of admirable and popular democrat ceases to be a statesman, attempting to bestow unity and health on the body politic by prescribing more wholesome habits of living. He becomes instead a sublimated District Attorney, whose duty it is to punish violations ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... win in this world, as we do, sycophants as we are? When we write a novel, our great stupid imaginations can go no further than to marry the hero to a fortune at the end, and to find out that he is a lord by right. O blundering lickspittle morality! And yet I would like to fancy some happy retributive Utopia in the peaceful cloud-land, where my friend the meek lieutenant should find the yards of his ship manned as he went on board, all the guns firing an enormous salute (only without the least noise or vile smell of ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Georgevitch, Ivan Petrovitch, Thaddeus the timber-merchant (peat boots), Michael and Boris (fine shoes). Matrena, sincere love, blundering heroism. Natacha unknown. Against Natacha: Never there during the attacks. At Moscow at the time of the bomb in the sleigh, no one knows where she was, and it is she who should have accompanied the general (detail furnished by Koupriane that Matrena generously ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... she had said; it was all his fault that she had got this to bear. With the best intentions in the world he had proved himself a blundering fool. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... counter-balanced by the greater steadiness of the regular troops on the other side—and the advantages he derived from falling by surprise upon an army that was more or less asleep, were all lost to him by blundering and bad leadership before ever he was at ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Joyce; but Michael had so much blundering honesty about him, or seemed to have, that I have been his dupe. It is too late, however, to repine; the fellow is gone; it only remains to ascertain the manner of his flight. May not Joel have undone the fastenings of the door, and let him and the Indian escape together, in common ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... Theobald on the canvas, and simply affixing the name of his mercurial contemporary beneath; and, indeed, there is much reason to doubt whether the mean jealousy which inspired the first "Dunciad," or the blundering rage which disfigured the second, is in the worse taste. Cibber kept his engagement, replying in pamphlet. The immediate victory was unquestionably his. Morbidly sensitive to ridicule, Pope suffered acutely. Richardson, who found him once with the Cibberine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... your horse's nose, under the dark roof between the red fir-pillars, in that rich subdued light. Now I plunge into a gloomy dell, wherein is no tinkling rivulet, ever pure; but instead a bog, hewn out into a chess-board of squares, parted by deep narrow ditches some twenty feet apart. Blundering among the stems I go, fetlock-deep in peat, and jumping at every third stride one of the said uncanny gripes, half hidden in long hassock grass. Oh Aira caespitosa, most stately and most variable of British grasses, why will you always grow where you are not wanted? Through ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... the Cave Folk far more than any near-sighted and blundering rhinoceros, however malignant, was the sudden arrival of the great red bears, the black lions, the grinning and implacable saber-tooth tigers, and giant black-gray wolves which hunted in small, handy packs of six or seven in number. All these, the dread foes of Man for as long as tradition ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Bentley hoped that no attendant might come blundering around now to spoil everything. His heart pounded ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... somewhere, or else some new device of infernal malice; I say the thing has been misconducted, with the same cursed blundering that has always attended that affair; and I would rather my wife were in her coffin than have seen what I ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... so lonely, here amongst all these people——Oh, I can't explain, and I'm afraid I'm distressing you," he went on remorsefully; for the frail figure was trembling, and the tears had gathered in the dark eyes. "I'm a blundering kind of idiot, and I'm worrying you with my tuppenny-ha'penny ...
— The Woman's Way • Charles Garvice
... himself, and for Corydon, but for the unborn soul as well. His money would last him only six or eight weeks, and then he would have to take to pot-boiling again. So every hour was precious; this time there could be no blundering permitted. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... a case of blindman's-buff; but the quarters below were narrow, and after a little blundering the two men who had charge of the ladder forced aside some of the heap of chests, hammocks and planks, placed the steps in position, and, sword in one hand, pistol in the other, the young officer sprang up. The gunner followed, and in less than a minute the ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... ran off, blundering over the ottomans and slamming the doors as a true boy should. Sylvia pricked chestnuts, and began to forget her bosom trouble as she wondered what would appear with the impatient curiosity appropriate to the character she had assumed. Presently her husband reappeared ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... the narrowest, crookedest, and most inconsequent little streets in the world, or left me cast-away upon the unfamiliar waters of some canal as far as possible from the point aimed at. Dark and secret little courts lay in wait for my blundering steps, and I was incessantly surprised and brought to surrender by paths that beguiled me up to dead walls, or the sudden brinks of canals. The wide and open squares before the innumerable churches of the city were equally victorious, and continually took me prisoner. But all places ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... no doubt that the helpful influences of the Caucasian in every part of Africa so far outweigh his harmful influences that the latter are but a drop in the bucket in comparison. It is most unfortunate that a certain admixture of blundering, severity, brutality, and wickedness seems inseparable from the development of all the newer parts of the world. The demoralizing drink traffic, the scandalous injustice and cruelty of some of the agents of civilized governments, are not to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... times hitherto hath spirit as well as virtue flown away and blundered. Alas! in our body dwelleth still all this delusion and blundering: body and will hath it ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... akin to awe. Its indifference to human kind, its serene superiority to the obvious, struck him forcibly with fresh meaning; so remote, so inaccessible seemed the secret purposes of its real life, so alien to the blundering honesty of other animals. Its absolute poise of bearing brought into his mind the opium-eater's words that "no dignity is perfect which does not at some point ally itself with the mysterious"; and he became suddenly ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... honestly bred, goes to a trade, or a store, where the employer practises legal frauds. The plain honesty of the boy excites roars of laughter among the better taught clerks. The master tells them that such blundering truthfulness must be pitied; the boy evidently has been neglected, and is not to be ridiculed for what he could not help. At first, it verily pains the youth's scruples, and tinges his face to frame a deliberate dishonesty, to finish, and to polish it. His tongue stammers at a lie; but ...
— Twelve Causes of Dishonesty • Henry Ward Beecher
... those hands of innocence — go, scare your sheep together, The blundering, tripping tups that bleat behind the old bell-wether; And if they snuff the taint and break to find another pen, Tell them it's tar that glistens so, and daub them ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... The task of dealing fairly and justly with this territorial complication should never be committed to the blundering legislation of man alone. His success as a legislator and executive for woman in the past does not inspire a confidence that in this most serious problem he will be any the less an unbiased judge and law-giver. This government of men permitted the establishment of a religious colony, so ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... scene in the novel marked by. genuine humour, and is also the only scene where we are in complete sympathy with the hero. One of the delegates has all the stiff courtesy and ridiculous formality which he regards as entirely consistent with his errand; the other is a big, blundering fellow, who has previously announced himself as a disciple of Tolstoi. To Sanin's philosophy of life, duelling is as absurd as religion, morality, or any other stupid conventionality; and his cold, ruthless logic ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... not accuse Mr. Asquith of anything worse at this stage than blundering. He was manifestly confounded and distressed by the Speaker's ruling. Whether this were due to the naming of the Bill or to Mr. Asquith's own speech on the second reading, "This is a bill to enfranchise male persons only, etc.", we were not able to discover; but the net result was that he found ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... said, blundering, "thou art fearful, just as another woman might be. 'Tis not like Clo Wildairs. Such thoughts will not ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the D'Estang's lookout. Anne and Sara leaned forward and saw that a blundering sailing vessel—her dark sails a blotch against the sky, her hull invisible—was careening just ahead. She had no lights, and curses on the heads of coastwise skippers who take risks and place other vessels in jeopardy merely to save oil, swept ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... his forehead. Had this stuttering static anything in kind with those other formless events? If not, what terrified creature was invoking his aid in this blundering fashion? ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... Her head was raised a trifle, and one tearful eye looked at me over her fingers. "I had always hoped you did," I continued, "for his sake, and for yours, and in my way, a very blundering way as it seems now, I have tried to bring you two together." Prudence only sobbed. "But things are not hopeless yet. I think I can see a means of ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Med Service had been operated in Sector Twelve. He was one of many men at work to correct the results of incompetence in directing Med Service in this sector. But it is always disheartening to have to labor at making up for somebody else's blundering, when there is so much new work that needs to ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... cannot have forgotten the commotion made by the newspapers in connection with this case, nor how they jumped at the opportunity once more to accuse the police of carelessness and blundering. Was it conceivable that a pick-pocket could play the part of an inspector like that, in broad daylight and in a public place, and rob a ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc
... and with a helpless arm; also he had no overcoat, and shivered pitifully. But, alas, it was again the case of the honest merchant, who finds that the genuine and unadulterated article is driven to the wall by the artistic counterfeit. Jurgis, as a beggar, was simply a blundering amateur in competition with organized and scientific professionalism. He was just out of the hospital—but the story was worn threadbare, and how could he prove it? He had his arm in a sling—and it was a device a regular beggar's ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... scrape. He was a great favorite here. Father and he were famous friends. Father said that Philip had no end of nonsense in him and was always blundering into something, but he was a royal good fellow and would come out ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... contempt for women, inbred in all but a minority of men. They seemed to him to have so little power of "playing the game"—the old, old game of success that men understand so well; through compromise, cunning, give and take, shrewd and prudent dealing. A kind of heady blundering, when caution and a few lies would have done all that was wanted—it was this he ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... inexplicable reason he did not do so; there was nothing to be gained here; yet he lingered. Perhaps one of those subtle, illusory influences we do not yet understand, and which sometimes shape the blundering finite will, mysteriously, without conscious volition, was at work. One about to stumble blindly forward, occasionally stops; why, he ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... general's blundering led to a disaster, and for some time misfortune by sea and failure by land dogged the Romans. But Carthage failed to use her opportunity; she did not attempt to strike a crushing blow when she ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... the chance of being run down and sunk by one of those big blundering iron steam-kettles," growled the lieutenant, who had the antipathy long felt by old sailors to all the modern innovations, as he considered them, ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... was relishing the praise of Toby, when an old man, pink and blond, with curly hair, short-sighted, almost blind under his golden spectacles, rather short, striking against the furniture, bowing to empty armchairs, blundering into the mirrors, pushed his crooked nose before Madame Marmet, who looked ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of rough, but sturdy, horses caught a highwayman's fancy, and you, lying on your pallet, thought things over until, willy-nilly, you felt that you must get up and make for the tavern, thereafter blundering into an icehole? Ah, our peasant of Russia! Never do you welcome death when ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... not know what to say; they felt as if their hands and feet had grown very big all at once, and as if the cents in their pockets never could be got at, at which they turned red and hot and got choked, and went away, swearing internally at their own blundering shyness, and deeper smitten than ever with Dely, because they wanted to comfort her so very much, and didn't ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... wholesome. I realised that it was because I had been oblivious to what I lacked myself, that I had been so fanatically severe upon others. I knew it is humiliating to confess it, but it is true. I have always been blundering and impetuous.—But what was I ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... specimen of conservatism in its purest form. So wise were our ancestors, that nothing of theirs shall ever be touched. Infallible legislators can make immutable laws; the rest of us must be content to learn by blundering, and to grow by changing. The man who says, 'I never alter my opinions,' condemns himself as either too foolish ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... more of a man of me," said Frank softly; "often and often when I have felt that I was only an ignorant, blundering boy." ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... He has too much good sense to be affronted at insult; he is too busy to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice.... If he engages in controversy of any kind his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy of better though less educated minds, who, like blunt weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean.... He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too clear-headed to be unjust; he is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is decisive. ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky
... about the tents for a time, and then they went away, blundering along over loose stones which rattled as they swept down the declivity. When they were some distance off, and still going, judging by the sound, the boys walked back to the tents and tried to sleep, but the excitement of ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... boy climbed back to the little house on the spur, and to the porch, on which he sank wearily. While he and Marjorie and Jason were blundering into a hopeless snarl of all their lives, this mountain girl, alone with the hills and the night and the stars, had alone found the truth—and she had pointed the way. The camp lights twinkled below. The moon swam in majestic splendor above. The evening star still ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... the Great is working in a shipyard under the name of Michaelhoff. There is another Russian employed in the same yard, a deserter named Peter Ivanhoff, and the very slight incidents upon which the action of the opera hinges arise from the mistakes of a blundering burgomaster who confuses the identity of the two men. The music is exceedingly bright and tuneful, and much of it is capitally written. Scarcely less popular in Germany than 'Czar und Zimmermann' is 'Der ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... Parson were chatting inside." Why don't you and Miss Loomis go over there and cheer her up sometimes? was the question he checked just as it trembled on his lips. Some brief inspiration of discretion warned him that that was ground too sacred for his blundering intrusion. "She seems downright lonely," he concluded, somewhat lamely and suggestively. "I don't think Mrs. Davies is cut out for this kind of army life. Here comes Langston now." He needn't have made that ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... even at the remembrance. But he had decided upon a fixed policy, and he was not a man to flinch from consequences. Miss Deane must be taught to despise him, else, God help them both, she might learn to love him as he now loved her. So, blundering towards his goal as men always blunder where a woman's heart is concerned, he blindly persisted in allowing her to make such false deductions as ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... and rage. He could not lie in peace in his bed; he got up and prowled about his room, blundering against chairs and tables in the darkness.... We were too stupid to do the most obvious things; we were sending all these boys into hardship and pitiless danger; we were sending them ill-equipped, insufficiently supported, we were ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... had been! What a fatuous, blundering ass! What had he done? Why had he done it? Was he in love, with Lucy Woodrow? This latter question recurred again and again through the night, and the answer came vehemently—no, no, and no again! He had nothing in common with the girl. He recited a score ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... it!" Lessard finally burst out, "you've handled this like a green one, fresh from over the water. You are held up; this man is robbed of ten thousand dollars; another man is murdered under your very nose—and then you waste thirty-six hours blundering around the country to satisfy your infernal curiosity. It's incredible, in a man of your frontier experience, under any hypothesis except that you stood in with the outlaws and held back to ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... his mount ceased to move, and undoing his leathern belt with a jerk, he struck the camel a smart blow on the shoulder. There was the protesting buzz of a large fly and an angry, disabled blundering on the sand, silenced by ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... like her," he had said, eagerly, with a man's blundering confidence, "and you can help her. She is very lonely, Diana—and I ...
— Glory of Youth • Temple Bailey
... fighting a better man. For two years he had been the terror of the neighbourhood, and he showed now that at least he had courage. His smattering of science, however, appeared only ridiculous. Once, through sheer strength and blundering force, he broke down his opponent's guard and struck him in the place that had dispatched many a man before—just over the heart. His present opponent scarcely winced, and Billy the Tanner paid the penalty then for his years of bullying. His antagonist paused for a single ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... uncouth because he now suppresses some of the hindering grimacing movements and retains the ones which he sees to be most nearly correct. Again he tries, and again, persistently but gradually reducing the blundering movements to the pattern of the copy, and so learning to perform ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... honest as any man living, that is an old man, and no honester than I] [There is much humour, and extreme good sense under the covering of this blundering expression. It is a sly insinuation that length of years, and the being much hacknied in the ways of men, as Shakespeare expresses it, take off the gloss of virtue, and bring much defilement on the manners. ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... but we may fairly infer that, as it has steadily resisted Providence and patriotic duty for more than twenty years, it must have had the devil on its side. Democrats can claim no credit, but stand convicted of a blundering mistake in abandoning the old and tried principles of their party, and following after strange gods with the hope of a brief and partial success. They have failed, and that dogma for hard money, which they abandoned, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... showered on all, she was amused by perceiving that good Mrs. Harewood was endowed with exactly the same grotesque order of ugliness as her son William; but she was even more engaging, from an indescribably droll mixture of heedlessness, blundering, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of which he took charge was a movement upon the rebel forces at Big Bethel. It was rash, unskiful, blundering and lacking both in perseverance and courage. His troops were repulsed ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... go and see him," said Adams, when the girl had explained what Pugin was, what Pugin did, and what Pugin had written. "A man like that could do more with a stroke of his pen, than I with weary years of blundering attempts to write. I can never thank you enough for listening to me. It is strange, but half the weight of the thing seems to have ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... know all about it. It was because I guessed that was coming that I wanted to clear the coast; but it appears that I was too late. Shall we sit down and talk this out, and for pity's sake see that that woman doesn't come blundering in. It's such an anti-climax to have to deal with a tea-tray in the midst of personal explanations. I'm not accustomed to eating humble pie, and if I am obliged to do it at all, I prefer ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... lamp stood, a droning, slow-winged brown beetle blundering against its chimney. Outside, the distant chant of newly wakened frogs sounded; through the open door the warm air of the April night came straying, bearing the incense of the fields and woodlands, where fires smoldered like sleepers ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... me, madame," says Monsieur Foullepointe, "who is that queer man who has been talking about the Court of Assizes before a gentleman whose acquittal lately created such a sensation: he is all the while blundering, like an ox in a bog, against everybody's sore spot. A lady burst into tears at hearing him tell of the death of a child, as she lost her own ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... easy enough if the blundering fools had only exercised an atom of sense," Mrs. Spencer retorted. "Mrs. Clephane couldn't deceive a normal two-year-old child; she is as transparent ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... mind," he said, in blundering consolation. "You look well in anything. I've often noticed, but I didn't think you cared for compliments. Anyway"—he grasped eagerly at something safe—"anyway, you can't beat that ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... squatter, pointing tauntily to the soiled garments of his kinsman, and then directing the attention of the spectators to his own, by the way of a triumphant contrast. "Here have I cut the throats of two lively does, and a scampering fawn, without spot or stain; while you, blundering dog as you ar', have made as much work for Eester and her girls, as though butchering was your regular calling. Come, boys; it is enough. I am too old not to know the signs of the frontiers; no Indian has been here since the last fall of water. Follow ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... stared stupidly at the key in his hand. "Well I am damned," he muttered. Then added, in savage and—as it seemed to the artist—exaggerated wrath, "I'm a stupid, blundering, irresponsible old fool." Nor was he consoled when the painter innocently assured him that no harm had resulted ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... clumsy, I'm afraid. But it cannot be helped. I must go blundering on. I'm groping in the dark, you know, but it's a thousand pities I shall have to ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... for the first time heard, that, had his companion possessed any real knowledge of human nature, he would at once have seen that his astonishment was not affected. But he had none, and, therefore, went on blundering in ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... the King's name,—I believe that one poor creature, the Justice of Peace, after getting himself well walled up in a corner with chairs and tables, began to quaver out the King's Proclamation against the Blacks,—the plaguy Soldiers came blundering up both pair of stairs, and fell upon us Billy Boys tooth and nail. 'Slid! my blood simmers when I think of it. Over went the tables and settles! Smash went trenchers and cups and glasses! Clink-a-clink went sword-blades and bayonets! "And ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... now and then getting entangled among strands of broken wire; blundering down into some trench-mortar hole and up again at the other side, Wetherby and Hawke at length came upon Bob Dashwood and Dennis, where the trench ended abruptly without ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... sense does he need them? Here, I think, we come on two inconsistent tendencies in Aristotle's thought, connected with two different ways of regarding the hierarchy of existences. We say that one existence is higher than another. Does this mean that what we call the lower are only so many blundering attempts to reach the higher? That every creature, for example, which is not a thinking man is, on the whole, a mistake? Aristotle often does speak like that. Woman, he says in one passage, is only a mutilated male.[22] The principle which ought ...
— Progress and History • Various
... he took to be a pushing and consequential busybody, more anxious to make a noise than to be useful. See Young's Autobiography (1898), pp. 243, 315, 437. Sir Ernest Clarke points out the injury done by Sinclair's hasty and blundering extravagance; but also shows that the board did great service in ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... indolent, blundering, empty-headed swell; the chief character in Tom Taylor's dramatic piece entitled Our American Cousin. He is greatly characterized by his admiration of "Brother Sam," for his incapacity to follow out the sequence of any train ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... at Penrith, and there are one or two notes concerning his journey tither. The next letter is dated 24th Aug., 1856. He wrote therefore when the Crimean War was still going forward. That war which, amongst mistaken policies, blundering Government tactics, and aimless ambitions, holds a foremost place. It was not till the end of the year 1855 that it came to an end. After the attack on Sebastopol, the French—whose army had suffered quite as much from the terrible ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... preparation. Fleets inferior to the enemy in equipment and number, are sent out on the emergency; detachments of troops are sent where armies should have gone; and thus victory itself is without effect. Thus for a year or two we continue blundering if not beaten, and angry with our generals and admirals for failing to do impossibilities. At last the nation becomes fairly roused; the success of the enemy makes exertion necessary; their insolence inflames the popular indignation; a great effort ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLII. Vol. LV. April, 1844 • Various
... venture, but if he failed to respond inwardly, left you with your unaccepted remark upon your hands, as it were. In his silence, Kitty fell a prey to very evil thoughts of him, for it made her harmless sally look like a blundering attack upon him. But just then the driver came to her rescue; he said, "Gentlemen and ladies, this is the end of the mountain promenade," and, turning his horse's head, drove rapidly ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... it has drawn to itself some of the vices, and all the unpopularity of an executive government. On the House of Commons above all, possessed as it is of the public purse, and consequently of the public sword, the nation throws all the blame of an ill-conducted war, of a blundering negotiation, of a disgraceful treaty, of an embarrassing commercial crisis. The delays of the Court of Chancery, the misconduct of a judge at Van Diemen's Land, any thing, in short, which in any part of the administration any person feels as a grievance, is attributed ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... side, intent, vigilant; and she had her little dinner prepared and taken up into the sickroom by Mrs. Taylor before she went to bed. I remember once going to her cot in the night, as she lay asleep, and almost breaking my heart over her with remorse and thankfulness—remorse, that I, with blundering stupidity, had judged her so superficially; and thankfulness, that it had pleased God to present to me so much of His own divinest grace. Fool that I was, not to be aware that messages from Him are not to be read through ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... which is worked on every green Freshman, and that the cries for help came from a Sophomore who was alternately smoking a pipe and yelling into a drain across the road. Still, Rogers said, it illustrated Hogboom's nobility of spirit. In his blundering fashion he went on to explain some more of Hoggy's good points, and by the time he sat down there wasn't a shred of the latter's reputation left intact. The whole school was grinning uncomfortably, and the Faculty was acting as if it was sitting, individually and ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... see that he has set about his Negro-repression campaign in too blundering a fashion. He evidently expects to be able to throw dust into the eyes of the intelligent world, juggler-wise, through the agency of the mighty pronoun US, as representing the entire Anglo-Saxon race, in his advocacy of the now scarcely intelligible pretensions of a little coterie of Her Majesty's ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... although, as one of the guests remarked, there were more drones than workers in the hive. I was now no drone, certainly, and that was some consolation. When I entered, Laura was conversing with a group of dashing young men, who were blundering over a book of charades. Seeing me enter, ...
— Friends and Neighbors - or Two Ways of Living in the World • Anonymous
... for the Osborns, for one of them at least had no patience with her. To Captain Osborn her existence and presence in the near neighbourhood were offences. He told himself that she was of the particular type of woman he most disliked. She was a big, blundering fool, he said, and her size and very good nature itself got on ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... two young gentlemen had had a difference. Figs, alone in the schoolroom, was blundering over a home letter; when Cuff, entering, bade him go upon some message, of which tarts were ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was a something which was far, very far, more serious than those old troubles which had oppressed him. This was something far different from those old perplexities—the entanglements with three engagements. Amid all those he was nothing but a big, blundering baby; but now he seemed like a sorrow-stricken man. Where was the light of his eyes, the glory of his brow, the music of his voice? Where was that glow that once used to pervade his fresh, open, ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... right!" shouted Ted repeatedly. But the officer was evidently too frightened or rattled to understand, and kept blundering along. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... Mrs. Shuster impulsively engaged Storm before Caspian met him, and very likely made some sort of contract to which he can hold her if he chooses. Besides, she admires him as much as ever, though she admires Larry more, and in her silly, blundering way, she plays a double game. All sweetness and light to Storm when she's with him, and immense pride in him as an employe—the pride a small, dull comet might feel in attracting attention to itself by trailing a disproportionately brilliant tail across the sky. All specious promises and ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... mixed us up hopelessly, as people did in those days. They knew I was associated with the Morning Standard, and that was all they knew about me; if they wanted to recall anything striking I had done, it was always Jevons they remembered. Poor Reggie was so inveterate in his blundering that after his fourth desperate effort he gave it up. His ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... how we planned it," continued De Gollyer, artfully blundering; "boat to Tangier, from Tangier ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... Taber?" He wondered if this crystal being was interested in that blundering fool who had gone recklessly into the city. "I don't ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... turned the handle it did not seem to work well, because the door did not open as it ought to have done. She turned it again and gave it a little pull, but it still remained tightly shut. She turned it again, still with no result, and then she tried the small latch. Perhaps the man had done some blundering thing when he had been examining it. She remembered hearing several clicks. She turned the handle again and again. There was no key in the keyhole, so he could not have bungled with the key. She was quite aghast at ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... derisively. 'No, it was you, when you looked at her. And now you have told me again.' She had a moment of thoughtful contempt for the blundering of men. There was Charles, who always seemed to wander in a mist, and now this Francis Sales, who revealed what he wished to hide. He was mentally inferior to Mr. Jenkins, who had a quickness of wit, a vulgar sharpness of tongue ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... of the bookworm, his remarks, which are rather long and very minute, are absurdly blundering. He calls it "a small white Silver-shining Worm or Moth, which I found much conversant among books and papers, and is supposed to be that which corrodes and eats holes thro' the leaves and covers. Its head appears bigg and blunt, ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... everything seemed to swim around me, but I made out to get the note to him, and he said: 'That's enough; go away, boy,' and I sort of backed and stumbled toward the door (I was always stumbling and blundering in company) and sat down. He was preaching in those whispered tones which always seem louder than thunder to the conscience, although they are only whispers in the ear. He had not uttered more than three sentences before my feelings were excited, and the more I listened the more awful I ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various |
